I was using NIS 2010 and then started using the 2011 version before I finally switched to MSE. Although in the task manager it uses around 65mb compared to about 10mb for NIS, the total amount of physical memory available is more with MSE (was NIS lying about it's memory usage?) and everything just seems smoother.

I've heard about Comodo firewall a lot and how great of a firewall it is, but I was wondering about how it's resource usage compared with the Windows firewall? I'm not sure how much memory Windows firewall uses, if someone could tell me, that would be great and I'd compare the two myself.

I'm sure Hungry Man will comment on this shortly since he uses Comodo as well and got me to use it.

Basically, Comodo is very light and effective. I'm not exactly sure how light but I can tell you it is lighter than MSE and does not cause any type of system slow down. I have uninstalled MSE and use Comodo Defense+ and Firewall as well as MBAM, (Which I use to scan at least 5 times a week) and Firefox with No script, WoT, Ad-block plus, and HTTPS Everywhere. I have yet to see my system lagging or acquiring a virus.

I would recommend it to you over the standard version of Windows Firewall anyday since it does a good job of sandboxing and keeping out the nasties you don't want to acquire.

In terms of MB Comodo only ever uses about 6MB of RAM. It also has VERY low disk I/O and CPU.

Firewall technology hasn't really changed much in the last decade. What Comodo offers over Windows 7's Firewall is that it tracks outbound requests as well as inbound, as well as the standard packet inspection services you'll find in most every firewall that's been updated in the 2000's. The GUI is also easier to manage and you can configure how "loud" it is and how often it alerts you.

What's so good about Comodo's Firewall is that it comes with Defense+. Defense+, in my opinion, negates the need for antivirus software.

To explain this you have to understand what most antiviruses are made up of. MSE for example is very simply, you have a blacklist and heuristics. Both of these react to files that are downloaded/ on your computer and it either says "this file is on my list of bad files" or "this file seems likely to behave badly" and then it decides what to do based on those two decisions.

Defense+ takes unknown files and sandboxes them. This limits what these files are able to do based on which sandboxing scheme you decide on. This allows you to run software that may be malicious but it won't infect your system. If you run the software and it's unknown it is first scanned, in the cloud, by Comodo's blacklist and heuristics. If the malware somehow isn't picked up by Comodo (it happens sometimes, though in my own tests very rarely) and it continues to run it is still stuck in the sandbox, which prevents it from seriously harming you. You can always delete that specific sandbox and its contents and that will remove the malware.

Basically, it comes down to this:

Antiviruses are bloaty and reactive measures. Defense+ is a HIPS (host intrusion prevention system) and it uses barely any resources.

EDIT: It is also worth nothing that you can force applications into a sandbox. I personally have Java and Digsby and IE9 forced into a Limited sandbox. This means if any of those applications are exploited the malware/ hacker will have to then try to break out of the sandbox.

Attached is a screenshot of my task manager showing resource usage of Comodo.

I used it with MSE for a while and then I realized that my antivirus was completely unnecessary.

I've literally downloaded dozens of malicious files and exploits and Comodo has prevented infection every single time.

To be fair I also have my default Downloads folder set to low integrity. But Java exploits were easy to deal with since I have java in a sandbox. I simply deleted the Java sandbox and that was it. Running scans with about 6 different very good scanners results in no results (I ran them in safe mode and normal mode just to be sure and even used RKill to make sure they were effective.)